When he was assaulted a second time in two weeks at Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon, Melvin Wells believed it was payback. The inmate — who received $65,000 in 2011 to settle a lawsuit that grew out of the incidents — had dared to file a complaint, or grievance, against the officer he said had beaten him the first time.

“When I got in the hallway is when they started beating me up again,” Wells said in a deposition for the federal lawsuit, in which he said he was slammed against a wall, had his nose broken and suffered subsequent psychiatric problems. “And they said this is what [people] like you get for filing a grievance.”

Wells was convicted of attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon in Nassau County in 1998, and was released in 2010. He has since passed away.

Retaliation for filing grievances against officers is common, according to experts who monitor state prisons and file lawsuits on inmates’ behalf. Moreover, they say, this environment is fostered across New York state prisons when few officers accused of excessive force are disciplined or fired and instead remain on the payrolls. It’s further encouraged through the state's drawn-out fights against lawsuits and directives that keep grievances out of personnel files, experts say.

Indeed, Wells’ grievances were dismissed as unfounded, according to court papers, while at least two officers named in his lawsuit continued to work in the system in 2015, the Poughkeepsie Journal found. This includes Sgt. Joseph Guarino, who was also named in a separate excessive force lawsuit — it resulted in a $50,000 settlement — as well as in a third lawsuit, filed last month in connection with the death of a Fishkill inmate, Samuel Harrell, 30, in April. The new lawsuit alleges a psychotic Harrell was beaten and thrown down a flight of stairs, and the officers’ union conspired in a coverup.

In response to these allegations the New York State Correctional Officers & Police Benevolent Association, Inc., stated it does not comment on “ongoing litigation. It certainly takes all claims levied against it seriously, including frivolous ones and will vehemently defend itself against such claims.”

Reached by phone, Guarino said he would like to comment, but was precluded from doing so by state officials; they denied a Journal request to interview Guarino due to “to ongoing state and federal investigations.”

Attorney Elizabeth Koob, who has represented several inmates in excessive-force lawsuits, said the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision fights lawsuits so vigorously that it leaves little room for disciplining guilty officers.

“By the time they lose or realize that they must settle,” she said in an email, “it is too late under the union contract to prosecute charges against the employee.” Inmates who complain have told her they are “harassed by guards, threatened and often written up with false charges.”

Mike Mazzella, a vice president of the Mid-Hudson region’s union representing about 5,000 officers in 13 facilities, said appropriate force is used.

“Corrections officers are sometimes in the fight for their own lives trying to defend themselves,” said Mazzella, an officer 22 years. “I have never, nor have I seen anyone ever, retaliate against an inmate” for filing a complaint against an officer.

State figures show there were 645 assaults on staff in 2013, the latest year available, with 80 at four Dutchess prisons, though several experts said the numbers may be inflated by a broad definition of assault.

State prison officials did not respond to numerous requests for comment on the issue of officer abuse. And though the union contended that offending officers sometimes are punished, neither state nor union officials provided statistics on disciplinary actions or firings.

Last March, three Attica guards resigned to avoid jail time after being criminally charged with a ferocious beating in which an inmate’s legs were broken. The case, in which the officers pleaded guilty to official misconduct, is a rare exception though, inmate experts say.

At least 29 state prison officers remained on the 2015 prison payroll despite being named in 24 lawsuits alleging excessive force against inmates; the suits resulted in an average inmate payment of $62,000, the journal reported Sept. 12. The state admitted no wrongdoing or liability in the cases, with 21 settled before trial. That is part of the problem, experts said.

“If they get settled with no admission of wrongdoing, the department of corrections cannot fire them,” said Soffiyah Elijah, executive director of the Correctional Association of New York. “If they have that level of protection, it’s hard to force them to do anything.”

Lacking documents, discipline

Prison experts say various factors serve to protect abusive officers, who they acknowledge are a minority of staff. Among these is a failure to track recurring complaints against officers, and incidents that involve force are often not well-documented or well-investigated, leaving little proof for inmates to offer in administrative proceedings in which, Elijah and others said, they almost always lose.

Paperwork was a key issue after Orrie Wilson was allegedly assaulted at Fishkill. Court documents contended prison staff completed no use of force documents or misbehavior reports, nor were there any initial records of his injuries, including fractured ribs and cuts to his wrists.

Wilson, who was convicted of attempted burglary in Kings County, said he was assaulted during a pat frisk in 2009, filed a civil suit in 2011 and was awarded a $60,000 settlement in 2012. Like all inmates who sue, Wilson went through the inmate grievance process before going to court — as all inmates must — and failed. He is serving 12 years to life in prison and is up for parole.

U.S. District Court Judge John Gleeson was critical of prison investigations of alleged inmate abuse when he approved a $300,000 settlement in 2008 to an inmate at a Staten Island prison.

“(A)lthough there may be exceptions, it appears to me that most of the time no one even bothers to interview the complaining inmate, the complained-about officer, or any witnesses,” Gleeson wrote in his decision. “Indeed, I think that mindset that just because an inmate says it happened is no evidence that it happened is the bedrock of a disciplinary system that literally never finds a grievance of this sort to be substantiated.”

And while the state doesn’t keep a record of grievances filed by inmates, it fails even to count how many times an officer has been sued, said Thomas Terrizzi, an attorney and former employee of Prisoners Legal Services of New York.

“The judgment wouldn’t be recorded in their personnel file,” Terrizzi said. “Sgt. Guarino has been sued a number of times; I don’t know if that stuff showed up in his personnel file.”

The problem stems in part from a departmental directive that stipulates that a grievance can't go into file "without the direct written consent by either the grievant or employee" in order to protect confidentiality, according to a state prison official on background.

Guarino, the Fishkill correctional sergeant named in the Wells and Wilson lawsuit settlements and the Harrell lawsuit, was, by his own admission, the subject of 30 inmate grievances a year, court records show. In a deposition taken for one of the settled cases, Guarino, who has a base pay of $84,000 a year, said the grievances focused mainly on “the way we pat frisk them, search them, search their property, and there’s a few where they claim they were harassed, threatened, hit,” according to the transcript. He acknowledged he is known as “Sergeant Searchalot” by inmates at Fishkill, court documents state. Several lawsuits alleged that pat frisks were used as excuses for abuse.

Grievances without merit

Mazzella, the regional union official, said many grievances may be without merit so shouldn’t be put in personnel files. “If you were to put inmate grievances into personnel files,” he said, “your personnel files would be so thick you wouldn’t know what to do with them.”

Complaints about staff conduct accounted for about 17 percent of 31,000 grievances filed in 2013 — or some 5,500 grievances, state statistics show.

Fishkill prison had 113 grievances that year, while Downstate Correctional Facility had 69 and Green Haven, in Stormville, recorded 349. The figures represent a 33 percent decrease from the previous year for Fishkill, a 47 percent increase for Downstate and more than a 100 percent increase for Green Haven, which had the highest number of lawsuits — 13 of 24 — in the Journal study.

Downstate is a maximum-level prison with 1,100 inmates, Fishkill is a medium-level with about 1,500 inmates, and Green Haven is maximum with about 2,000 inmates.

No state figures were available specifically on how these cases were resolved, but inmate advocates say almost all are found to have no merit.

“Ninety-eight percent of grievances are determined to be unfounded,” Elijah said. “It tells you something has to be wrong with the grievance procedure.”

Staff conduct grievances remain in the top five most grieved categories. The state claims the number of those grievances filed is “inflated” because inmates differ in opinion with staff and don’t understand the facility’s polices or statewide rules, therefore filing grievances that don’t have merit.

After filing grievances that were thrown out, Daniel Castro-Sanchez — an inmate who was receiving mental health care at Green Haven Correctional Facility while serving 20 years for a first-degree manslaughter charge that occurred in Bronx County — filed a civil suit in 2010 alleging harassment, threats or assault on 10 separate occasions that caused him to become so distraught that he used a can top to "deeply cut into my arm." He was awarded $33,571 in 2013 in a settlement of a lawsuit that alleged abuse by officers. Castro-Sanchez remains in custody at Woodburne Correctional.

Mazzella disagreed that extensive investigations aren’t pursued, having been a grievance officer while working at Green Haven.

He said inmates often are angry when they file grievances. During questioning inmates, he said he’d learn the events didn’t unfold as described in the grievance.

“So now we can’t even write a misbehavior report for lying because he’s protected under the grievance program,” Mazzella said. “That’s why a lot of grievances have no merit.”

Moving forward

Prison experts say abuse of inmates has a long tradition. In court documents dating to 1995, Prisoners Legal Services of New York, which represents inmates, found 13 cases from the 1980s in which prison officials failed to discipline officers at Clinton Correctional Facility even after internal probes showed excessive force had been used by officers; discipline was meted out in three other cases.

Michael Cassidy, an attorney for the organization, said the administration was “sanctioning the ongoing abuse and climate of abuse, sending the message to staff that they could get away with this kind of conduct.”

It is a climate that many say persists.

Samuel Harrell with his niece. Harrell died in April while imprisoned at Fishkill Correctional Facility in Beacon.(Photo: Courtesy photo)

In the aftermath of Harrell’s death at Fishkill, state Sen. Bill Perkins, a Manhattan Democrat, announced he would introduce legislation that would provide for an independent investigation of the state correctional system; overhaul recruitment and training; implement the use of independently monitored cameras at correctional facilities; and provide that a medical and crisis intervention staff be on call, among other reforms.

Inmate experts emphasize that it’s important to hold staff accountable for their actions.

“There should be a much better screening process for hiring people in that position,” Elijah said, adding that things need to be changed so that staff “can’t get away from these human rights violations with impunity.”

The Mid-Hudson region union rep, however, said that officers are under more scrutiny due to public awareness and media coverage.

Sing Sing corrections officer Lavar Thomas, 36, was arrested for misdemeanor assault and harassment, a violation, after striking an inmate several times causing injury without provocation, according to state police. Police said in a news release they were contacted by state corrections in May to investigate the allegation of “excessive force.”

In a court transcript, Judge Gleeson suggested improvement by interviewing inmates and officers when grievances are filed, using cameras to investigate accusations, and employing a more “detached investigating officer.”

Koob, the attorney who has worked on various civil cases alleging excessive force used on inmates, said it’s the administration that needs to enforce the change.

“If they wanted to stop inmate abuse, they could,” she said, “if they set the tone and made the union understand they meant business.”